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For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience ... indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.

B. H. Liddell Hart

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B. H. Liddell Hart
Age: 74 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 31
Died: 1970
Died: January 29
Historian
Journalist
Military Historian
Writer
Paris
France
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart
Basil Henry Liddell Hart
Even
Practical
Valuable
Training
Military
Indirect
Peace
Wider
Experience
Theoretical
May
Infinitely
Best
Practicals

More quotes by B. H. Liddell Hart

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The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
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War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.
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In a campaign against more than one state or army, it is more fruitful to concentrate first against the weaker partner than to attempt the overthrow of the stronger in the belief that the latter's defeat will automatically involve the collapse of the others.
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In war the chief incalculable is the human will, which manifests itself in resistance, which in turn lies in the province of tactics. Strategy has not to overcome resistance, except from nature. Its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance, and it seeks to fulfil this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise.
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For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.
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As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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The military weapon is but one of the means that serve the purposes of war: one out of the assortment which grand strategy can employ.
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Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
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The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
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While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy's economic and moral centres without having first to achieve 'the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield'. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means - hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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The more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change in the balance of force ... The essential condition of such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionately greater than on oneself.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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Ensure that both plan and dispositions are flexible, adaptable to circumstances. Your plan should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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It is only to clear from history that states rarely keep faith with each other, save in so far (and so long) as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.
B. H. Liddell Hart